The Laboratory Themes

This theme is at the core of "The Laboratory." It's the feeling that drives our speaker on her bloody quest. Basically, if she wasn't crazy jealous of her ex-lover and his new girlfriend, there wou...

If jealousy is what motivates the speaker in "The Laboratory," revenge is what she's after. Big time. This whole poem is about plotting revenge and taking steps to get it. She doesn't just want to...

Maybe you've already noticed how much of "The Laboratory" is about death—not just the idea of death, or some poetic thoughts about mortality, but the dirty, violent reality of poison and murder....

"The Laboratory" isn't about the kind of science we usually think about. There are no white coats or controlled experiments or anything like that. Still, the poem does take place in a laboratory of...

This is a theme that might not pop out on a first reading of "The Laboratory," but when you look back, you start to see it everywhere. Men are basically background characters in this poem—we don'...